


A Practice in Patient Study

by Lithenai



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 04:50:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7345621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lithenai/pseuds/Lithenai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>~Discontinued for the time being. I'm sadly not confident in my ability to portray certain characters.~</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Practice in Patient Study

Tonight is the same routine as usual, wandering to the final class and lecture of the day dreading the mundane information that will be attempted to be drilled into your head while it goes in one ear mills around for a brief period of consideration and ultimately is filed away under unimportant as you're fairly certain it won't be used anytime in the future other than to complete an exam. So instead, while settled far into the background of the tiered seating arrangements of the secondary lecture hall, you let your gaze wander around to the various students in some wild hope that their actions might give you some form of mental stimulation. Otherwise, you're going to have to admit it is all futile and lower yourself to the point of doodling in the margins of your notebook and that is not something that you particularly wish to do. Worse yet, you may be forced to actually take notes. 

Somehow you're certain the vast majority of students seated, some patiently some not, at their places within the lecture hall only pay as much attention as their general requirements force them to. Others seem almost genuinely interested despite you knowing for a fact that this foray into the mathematic disciplines hardly concerns their major or what they seem to be so entirely obsessive towards. In only draws more curiosity when the current subject of your wandering gaze is fervently scribbling down notes in ever so elegant text trying in futility to keep up with the ramblings of your current professor. It's at this point you realize you've completely forgone the notion of looking at the clock perched high above the hall's exit, as you so often do out of boredom caused by the subject, in favor of this almost unique study into the psychology of the overachiever.

Kanaya Maryam, you'd heard her last name from her answering the professor's random questions used to check if everyone is paying attention and her first from those that seemed to know her a little more personally. Despite the number of students that knew who she was you had very rarely seen her engaging in the social activities around campus, nor often did you see her often exchanging more than the usual pleasantries of small talk that seemed a basic requirement taught by society. You didn't much enjoy small talk, it was an odd waste of energy and lacked any real information to be processed, in a shorter way it was simply boring. So instead of thinking about how she had quietly answered with her mood being rather good that morning you focused on the way she appears today.

As every day she is put together incredibly well, her hair, though short, brushed through without a hair out of place and finished with a small jade colored clip that you're certain is wholly for decoration and performs no actual function. Instead, it ties itself into the primary color of her shirt, the sleeves ending just past her elbows and showing off the smallest and most discrete tattoo you've ever seen on a college student. It's almost serendipitous that this tattoo happens to be a small rose starting with its thorny stem on her forearm and ending in a not fully blooming mass of petals just underneath her wrist. It's difficult to see the intricacies of it from your perch several rows above her, made only more difficult by the lightly tanned tone of her skin that you're fairly certain is Italian in origin and not from hours spent outside of her dormitory. But then the professor is dismissing the class and you're cut off from your inspection of her as she reaches down to close her notebook and place both it and her algebra book in a dark bag she pulls elegantly over her shoulder. 

It's a shame really when she leaves, removing the most interesting thing of the day as your psychology class was held only every other day. Still, you followed suit, gathering your things and your notebook that had no more notes placed within it than when you bought it. You were a little less delicate with the way you lifted your bag over one shoulder and started filing yourself with the rest of the students that decided they wished to be further away from the lesson. 

"Miss Lalonde." The professor's voice called just before you got to the door, making you inwardly groan but you put on your best pretending to care face and turned back around. "You are aware that as a major part of your grade you're required to hand in your workbook regularly and that it not be in the same state as when I issued it to you, correct?" 

Pretend to care, Rose, you kept telling yourself. "I'm supposed to repeatedly show you in repetition that I understand that subject material? I score highly regularly on exams." Well, that failed miserably. 

"The exams are only a third of your grade, I expect you caught up with your workbook within the next two weeks or I will have no choice but to give you a failing grade." He couldn't be serious. He was scowling, fantastic he was serious. "Now have a good evening, Miss Lalonde." 

As you turned to leave you let out that groan that you had held inwardly since the moment he'd called your name. Certainly, mathematics held some uses in certain areas of expertise but it was never your intention to use it in a professional capacity. So why then was it a core requirement for a master's in psychology? You'd run through several instances where you attempted to discern precisely where mathematics make come into play within a profession that would be afforded to you with such a degree but outside of potentially knowing how to add and subtract or a basic formula for medication based upon body weight and height you weren't really sure how it would come in handy. Algebra certainly not seeing as how it dealt much more with the theory than the actual use of mathematics. 

What you didn't expect after being mildly detained by your professor was that it would afford you a unique opportunity overhearing a conversation before the turn off to your dormitory that involved more than small talk from the current subject of your curiosity. At least you believed it was her, the voice sounded fairly familiar, quiet and firm even in its little lilts. 

"I believe at this point I am supposed to make some retort about how you seem to believe that I am your personal seamstress whenever the urge strikes you to arbitrarily change characters within, what was it again?" That sort of snarky remark was not one that you were expecting from the ever elegant miss Maryam. 

"Larping Kanaya, Live Action Roleplay..." The rest of the explanation didn't really interest you, it was a voice you didn't recognize but it sounded fairly frustrated and demanding at that moment. You almost felt bad for Kanaya if that happened to be a regular occurrence among her friends. 

"Alright, come to my dorm room tomorrow and we'll go over the details." She seemed to concede. A shame really. Better move before they happen to come around and catch their unknown eavesdropper. 

It was time to end another day of the routine, shower, go to bed, wake up and repeat the same thing over the next day.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction posted here and I can only hope that some of you enjoy the work. That said, it's a friend that knows who they are that I will thank the most as I wouldn't even know about this site if not for them.


End file.
